


Suffering Tests the Bravery of Men

by AgentMaryMargaretSkitz, IncendiaGlacies



Series: Legends of S.H.I.E.L.D [10]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Agents of Shield AU, Backstory, Captain Canary mention, Grief, Hank Heywood's A+ Parenting, Timeship mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz/pseuds/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncendiaGlacies/pseuds/IncendiaGlacies
Summary: Snippets of some of the men of the Legends of SHIELD universe and what they've gone through.





	Suffering Tests the Bravery of Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IncendiaGlacies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncendiaGlacies/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday, Incendia! I know how much you loved the mini stories I did for the ladies of our LoS verse, so I decided to give it a shot with the men. Sorry I'm a few days late, but I hope you and the other fans of this verse enjoy it!

               Even before Calvert happened, other SHIELD agents had looked up to him as an almost legendary figure. After that mission, people talked about him the same way they discussed Amaya Jiwe, although there was a lot more fiction to their stories than fact. He never bothered to correct them and ignored the questions that were posed to him about that fateful day. The memories alone tortured him enough even without talking about it. It was the not talking that had lead to his divorce and agents whispering about his coldness when they thought he wasn’t there.

               Despite trying to push the rest of the world away, there was one person who refused to be moved. Gideon Rider, who had gone from a trainee he’d taken under his wing to his best friend, adamantly made sure to always visit him when she was in town. She would insist meeting at least once when they were in the same city, and he always followed through. Seeing her always made him feel a little better.

Two months after he last saw her, the Dominators attacked Earth. Among the dead was Gideon Rider.

               As soon as he saw her name on the list of deceased agents, he took some days off. He visited her father and helped with the funeral arrangements. The moment he had come home from the gravesite, he poured a scotch and let himself cry for her. For weeks, he had to wake up from dreams of her alive and remember all over again that she was gone. It broke his heart every time. He had lost friends before in the line of duty, but losing Gideon felt even worse. She should have had a long successful career, not one cut short.

               A few months later, he was summoned to see Amanda Waller. The director of SHIELD informed him that Gideon been brought back to life through a secret project. She was to be given her own team, but she would not be the one assembling it. While Gideon would think she was handpicking people, it was up to him to provide short lists. It would a team that would not just be able to function on missions, but to also deal with Gideon should she start showing side effects from her resurrection.

                Seeing Gideon again made him realize how much he missed her, but he also had a job to watch over her. When she started to question her resurrection, his desire to tell her was outweighed by knowing how horrified she’d be at what had been done to her. After Zee was shot and Gideon went on the warpath to save her, he learned that Gideon knew what had brought her back. Even worse, she and Zee were determined to find out more about the serum that had saved them both.

As he called in the latest update to Waller, Rip Hunter wondered how much longer he could keep doing this to her.

* * *

 

               His parents had split up just after he turned seven. The separation was inevitable, but Mom and Dad each getting custody of a son surprised him. His father refused to take him, choosing Syndey instead because he was the more normal kid. The words stung, even though it was not the first instance where his father had scorned him for not being more like Syndey. Once the divorce was finalized, his father and brother fell out of touch almost entirely.

               At least with his mother, she tried her best with him, even if she didn’t understand what his inventions were and worried about him and the kids who picked on him. But she still believed that he could go far and encouraged him, where his father hadn’t had any faith in him at all. When he was accepted into SHIELD’s Academy of Science and Technology, it opened more doors for him than were imaginable. He was surrounded by people who not only understood what he was saying but encouraged him to go further with his ideas.

               It was there that Lily Stein came into his life. He thought of ways to try and impress her before they ended up as lab partners and then inseparable friends. She was easy to talk to and even better to work with. They were like two halves of the same whole. When time came for them to take their field assessments and Lily flunked hers, he made sure to sabotage himself to make sure he failed too so they wouldn’t be split up.

Lily still didn’t know and he never wanted her to. She’d have thought she was holding him back.

               After graduation, they were stationed in one of SHIELD’s science facilities. They were safe there, but sometimes it felt like a cage when they listened to stories from field agents who had been all over the world. He found himself longing for adventure with Lily before Gideon Rider came to offer it to them. They were able to be part of a mobile team, traveling the world and doing science at the same time.

               Then it took a darker turn after Lily nearly died from an alien virus. He began to ponder over things that were unsaid from him and started to think of ways he could finally say them to her. But they got put aside when researching the serum that had saved Zee. Lily had the chance to go to the Hub to find more information about it with the resources there and he encouraged her to. Before she left, he gave her a hug and told her he’d see her soon.

While she was gone, a message sent out to all of SHIELD was decrypted and Ray Palmer began to fear for his other half and her fate.

* * *

 

               From the moment they diagnosed him with hemophilia, he was treated like a glass sculpture. His mother worried so much about everything he did and if he would hurt himself. Opposite to her smothering was his father, who only expressed disgust and disappointment that he was never going to be like the other kids. When he tried to compensate with his brain, other children were resentful of the teacher’s pet. All of it planted a dark bitter seed in him at an early age.

               As the boy grew, the bitterness inside was nourished by watching other kids play so freely without fearing of bleeding to death. Instead of bringing home sports trophies, he brought hospital bills. He did manage to excel in academics, but his father only saw his weakness instead of his strength. By the time he was seventeen, they barely were speaking to each other. Even when he ended up in the hospital again, his father only visited him once.

However, there was a visitor that did come while he was alone who would change his life.

               He introduced himself as Zaman Druce, agent of SHIELD, and explained that he had heard of him through a friend of his father’s, a child who was smart but held back by hemophilia. In the hospital bed, he listened as the older man offered him a solution to his lifelong problem. He could get the cure he needed and become something that once seemed impossible to him, but he would have to leave his family behind. It wasn’t a difficult choice to make.

               The drug required injections every few months, but it affected his platelets in a way that allowed them to clot properly if he was injured. With that taken care of, Druce started to train him in various fields. He was already good at strategy and languages while combat and marksmanship were brand new to him. Druce was a brutal and cruel teacher, but he was a fast learner. Over the years, he progressed from a helpless kid into a dangerous man.

               One day, Druce told him the SHIELD Operations Academy had accepted him into their class. While he was grateful to hear that, there was more news to follow. It was that day that he learned there was more to SHIELD than most people knew. He was now a part of it and it was time to prove his worth to them after they’d given him a cure. Druce reminded him often of the debt he owed, and he could not turn his back on the man who’d done so much for him.

A few years later, Nate Heywood was assigned by SHIELD to Gideon Rider’s team, but boarded the Waverider with a separate agenda.

* * *

 

               At a young age, he knew he wanted to be like his grandfather. The stories of the Commandos he had been told by the old man were fascinating no matter how many times he heard them. From a very young age, they inspired him to want to become a spy. His father wanted him to follow his path into politics, but that was never his calling. He figured that out when nearly every kid in his class turned their back on him after his father closed the plant their parents worked at.

               When he was eleven, his grandfather passed away. The funeral was massive, given what he had done in his life for the world. There, he spied the director of SHIELD sitting with a few agents around her. She approached his family after the service and offered her condolences. After she asked him what he was planning to be when he grew up, he whispered quietly into her ear that he wanted to be an agent of SHIELD. The director has smiled warmly and said she’d be keeping an eye on him.

It was years later during his second week on the police force that two agents approached him.

               From day one, he was finally living in his dream. SHIELD was one of the hardest things he had ever taken on in his life, but this was his place in the world. He was able to connect with other agents and worked well alongside them. Not once did he ever bring up his grandfather’s role in history. It just wasn’t something he felt like advertising.

               After his partner was killed in the field, he went back to his SO, Zaman Druce. They ended up crossing paths with a team that had an old trainee of Druce’s, Nate Heywood, on its roster. In the first brief encounter, he found himself liking the group, especially the scientist. The next time their paths crossed, he accompanied the scientist back to the Hub and assisted her with some of her research moments before everything went to hell.

At the end of it all, still stinging from the betrayal of his SO and unsure where to go, Eddie Thawne hoped that Gideon Rider’s team might be able to let him stay with them.

* * *

 

               When he was little, one of the first lessons he learned was that the world was not a fair place. His father saw him and his sister as either worthless or a means to an end. People outside of the house scowled at the boy, thinking he was going to be no better than his father. After his first stint in juvie, he ignored what people said and hardened himself to the world. Nothing would hurt him ever again if he didn’t let it in.

               Once he was old enough, he got the hell out of his hometown with his sister in tow. He worked odd jobs to put her through school before embarking on an ever-changing career path. It started out with heists for the money and the rush he got during them. Each one got more daring than the last until one caught the attention of the military. He was brought on to plan missions out for various operations and might have still been doing it if he hadn’t found out innocent civilians were getting murdered in the process. Once this was discovered, he set himself up to get kicked out and got as far away as he could.

It was shortly after this that he met his wife in the middle of a barfight.

               Sara Lance was dangerous, beautiful, and mysterious, and they hit it off shortly after their first meeting. They’d probably known each other little more than a year when they got married. Everything had been fine until she came home one day looking upset. She filed for divorce the next day, and the process went quicker than Leonard thought it would have gone. Once it was final, she disappeared right out of his life.

               Her departure did hurt him, but it was a reminder of how much the world could hurt you. He got back up on his feet and into the mercenary business a few years before SHIELD fell apart. Shortly after it did, Sara’s sister arrived into his life. She had been a loyal agent of SHIELD, and so had Sara. Now that SHIELD was rebuilding in secret, that Gideon Rider needed agents and was interested in him. He stayed on the fence about it until Laurel died, then agreed with Rider to sign on.

Rider had warned him that his life could get a lot weirder with them, but the last thing Leonard Snart expected was his ex-wife turning up at the same SHIELD base as him.

* * *

 

               If he hadn’t gotten hurt playing football, he might have never found out how well he worked with machines. He started searching for an outlet of his energy while his injury kept him off the field. It turned out that he had a real knack for learning about engines and learning to fix them. This nurtured a late-blooming interest in engineering for him to pursue.

               His skill caught the eye of SHIELD, who recruited him into their ranks. Halfway through his time at the Academy, a new assignment was given to him out of the blue. For a semester, he was sent to an aircraft carrier to replace a mechanic. Other agents aboard were suspicious about him in the job at first since he was so young. Soon enough, they stopped their questioning once they saw his prowess and told him he had a bright future at SHIELD.

That all came to a screeching halt when Hydra rose up from the shadows and attacked.

               There was so much uncertainty happening around him with Hydra sleeper agents seeking out loyal SHIELD agents. Never had he felt so terrified. If the Lance sisters had not come and taken out the Hydra agents threatening him, he would have had his brains blown out like the agent who had been at his right. Thankful for their intervention, he stuck with them to seek out more survivors. They found more loyal SHIELD agents and succeeded in ousting out the Hydra infiltrators from the ship.

               Even though they won on the ship, the rest of SHIELD had fallen in the uprising. The survivors of the carrier, lead by Agent Bennett, decided to form a new SHIELD, one with a board rather than one director. Progress was slow until it was discovered another SHIELD was operating in the shadows with Amanda Waller’s Toolbox in their possession. So Bennett sent him with the Lance sisters to infiltrate the other SHIELD and learn more about them.

Even though he was on a mission and was loyal to another SHIELD, Jefferson Jackson found himself growing closer to Gideon Rider and her team and dreading the day he’d have to end this false SHIELD.

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-daaaaaaaa!
> 
> (I might have to do a part 2 somewhere down the road to this with a few other characters)


End file.
